Help me rewrite this sentence, only the bold section

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The idea that "idle hands are the devils work" directly links to the problem of evil. They relate in that if Satan is causing these bad things to happen and causing Larry to do these small evils then are those things evil at all. Is Larry really an evil person for doing these things if he is not choosing to do so himself.

2 answers

That is quite a philosophical question, which I think can be simplified this way:

If Satan caused Larry to do bad things, is Larry responsible for doing evil at all?

Here’s my thinking on what you wrote:

They relate in that if Satan is causing [these bad things] to happen and causing Larry to do [these small evils] then are [those things] evil at all.

There is no grammatical use for: in that if.

These and those are demonstrative pronouns, which you’re using to define the idea of evil (noun); however, you're using three separate pronoun phrases with two different nouns (things and evils); i.e., these bad things, these small evils, and those things, which creates relational ambiguity in a sentence intended to define a single noun (idea).